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Traditional IFC relies on geostationary (GEO) satellites, where high latency and constrained bandwidth degrade user experience. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations such as Starlink promise improved performance. This paper provides the first empirical comparison across GEO and LEO using measurements from 25 flights across 7 airlines, covering latency, throughput, CDN responsiveness, DNS effects, and TCP behavior.",{"@graph":69,"@context":126},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/from-geo-to-leo-first-look-into-starlink-in-flight-connectivity/269396/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/from-geo-to-leo-first-look-into-starlink-in-flight-connectivity/269396.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Berry Peter","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-08","2026-09-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":46},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118,122],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What problem does the paper address about in-flight connectivity?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The paper addresses the need for reliable Internet access during air travel and the limitations of traditional GEO-based IFC, especially high latency and bandwidth constraints.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the study compare GEO and LEO IFC performance?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It uses data from 25 flights operated by 7 airlines, with measurements collected via instrumented Android devices to evaluate latency, throughput, CDN responsiveness, DNS behavior, and related metrics.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What does the paper find about Starlink gateway selection and latency?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Starlink clients connect to gateways that better align with flight trajectories, enabling shorter end-to-end paths and reducing latency compared with GEO’s typically distant, fixed gateways.",{"name":123,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":124},"How do DNS filtering and TCP congestion control differ on Starlink flights?",{"text":125,"@type":113},"DNS-based content filtering can distort user geolocation and add unnecessary terrestrial delays, while TCP experiments show BBR achieving up to 35x higher throughput than Cubic and Vegas at the cost of more retransmissions due to aggressive bandwidth probing.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":128,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":130,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":132,"site_id":62},269396,1789451250,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":135},{"doc_id":132,"user_id":136,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":137,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":138,"file_id":139,"file_url":140,"file_type":141,"file_size":142,"view_count":46,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":143,"language":144,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":145,"faqs":146,"seo_title":147,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":133,"read_time":148,"preview_page_count":4},1374402524268,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_3d24733baf745e90a7e4bdd5f77d97b2","From GEO to LEO:  \nFirst Look Into Starlink In-Flight Connectivity  \nHyunSeok Daniel Jang  \nNorthwestern University Evanston, IL, USA  \nMatteo Varvello  \nNokia Bell Labs Murray Hill, NJ, USA [matteo.varvello@nokia.com](matteo.varvello@nokia.com)  \n[daniel.jang@u.northwestern.edu](daniel.jang@u.northwestern.edu)  \nAravindh Raman  \nCisco ThousandEyes London, UK[araram@cisco.com](araram@cisco.com)  \nYasir Zaki  \nNew York University Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi, UAE [yasir.zaki@nyu.edu](yasir.zaki@nyu.edu)  \nAbstract  \nThe growing demand for reliable Internet access during air travel has made in-flight connectivity (IFC) a critical service for commercial airlines. Traditional IFC systems rely on geostationary (GEO) satellites, but their high latency and limited bandwidth hinder user experience. Emerging Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations, such as Starlink, promise better network performance. This paper presents the first empirical comparison ofIFC performance across GEO and LEO networks, using data from 25 flights operated by 7 airlines. Measurements collected via instrumented Android devices cover key metrics including latency, throughput, and CDN responsiveness. We observe that while GEO systems rely on static and often distant Internet gateways, Starlink clients connect to different gateways that align more closely with flight trajectories, enhancing end-to-end performance through shorter satellite paths. However, DNS-based content filtering on Starlink-equipped flights often affects user geolocation, introducing unnecessary terrestrial delays. Finally, our case study of TCP performance from 2 Starlink flights shows that the BBR congestion control algorithm delivers up to 35× higher throughput than Cubic and Vegas, but with significantly higher retransmissions due to aggressive bandwidth probing.  \nCCS Concepts  \n• Networks → Network measurement; Network performance analysis; Location based services.  \nKeywords  \nIn-Flight Connectivity, Satellite Network, Starlink  \nACM Reference Format:  \nHyunSeok, Daniel Jang, Matteo Varvello, Aravindh Raman, and Yasir Zaki.  \n2025. From GEO to LEO: First Look Into Starlink In-Flight Connectivity. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC’25), October 28–31, 2025, Madison, WI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. [https://doi.org/10.1145/3730567.3764491](https://doi.org/10.1145/3730567.3764491)  \n1 Introduction  \nCommercial airlines have thus far largely relied on geostationary (GEO) satellite networks to provide connectivity to passengers. However, these networks are often affected by high latency and  \nThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4 .0 International License. IMC’25, Madison, WI, USA  \n© 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s) .  \nACM ISBN 979-8-4007-1860-1/2025/10  \n[https://doi.org/10.1145/3730567.3764491](https://doi.org/10.1145/3730567.3764491)  \nbandwidth constraints due to the large distances involved in signal transmission [17, 30] . In contrast, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks, exemplified by Starlink [42], promise significant improvements in latency and overall network performance by leveraging a constellation of satellites closer to Earth.  \nThis paper investigates the performance implications of transitioning from GEO to LEO satellite networks in the context of commercial aviation. Motivated by emerging partnerships between Starlink and major airlines [18, 36], we conducted extensive network diagnostics throughout 25 flights across 7 airlines. Our study employs AmiGo [47], an open-source measurement testbed on rooted Android devices to collect a comprehensive set of network performance metrics, including latency, bandwidth, DNS and CDN performance. Notably, while 19 flights operated on GEO networks, the remaining 6 were connected to Starlink’s LEO network. In two of these Starlink flights, we use an extended version of AmiGo for a closer case study on gateway selection and TCP behavior.  \nOur research addresses a criti","cbCais4NhecvZCGj","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCais4NhecvZCGj","pdf",1514586,11,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n# Background and Related Work\n## Satellite Network Operators (SNOs)\n## GEO and LEO Overview","[{\"question\":\"What problem does the paper address about in-flight connectivity?\",\"answer\":\"The paper addresses the need for reliable Internet access during air travel and the limitations of traditional GEO-based IFC, especially high latency and bandwidth constraints.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the study compare GEO and LEO IFC performance?\",\"answer\":\"It uses data from 25 flights operated by 7 airlines, with measurements collected via instrumented Android devices to evaluate latency, throughput, CDN responsiveness, DNS behavior, and related metrics.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the paper find about Starlink gateway selection and latency?\",\"answer\":\"Starlink clients connect to gateways that better align with flight trajectories, enabling shorter end-to-end paths and reducing latency compared with GEO’s typically distant, fixed gateways.\"},{\"question\":\"How do DNS filtering and TCP congestion control differ on Starlink flights?\",\"answer\":\"DNS-based content filtering can distort user geolocation and add unnecessary terrestrial delays, while TCP experiments show BBR achieving up to 35x higher throughput than Cubic and Vegas at the cost of more retransmissions due to aggressive bandwidth probing.\"}]","From GEO to LEO - First Look Into Starlink In-Flight Connectivity | PDF",28]